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Joey Garrison

The Tennessean

Marc Hill

Ralph Schulz / File / The Tennessean

Patricia Stokes

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As the Metro school board continues to raise alarm over the influx of charter schools in Davidson County, leaders of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce believe its time could have been better spent.

“There’s been a lot of time and effort wasted over this past year on the issue,” Marc Hill, the chamber’s chief policy officer, told The Tennessean’s editorial board last week after unveiling its 2013 annual Education Report Card in advance of a formal release today.

In recent months, the school board has put increasing attention toward publicly financed, privately led charters. It hired an attorney who questioned the constitutionality of the state’s charter law, blamed a projected budget shortfall on charter growth and adopted a policy that limits where new charters can apply to open next year.

The chamber, which recommended a “strategic plan” to direct charter growth a year ago, applauded the board’s move to proactively direct new charter operators to areas in South Nashville that have overcrowded schools, and to existing struggling public schools.

Nevertheless, the pro-business group doesn’t appreciate the back-and-forth on charters that has consumed the discourse.

“Every minute you spend arguing the issue of charters — and who’s in charge and who’s not in charge and what’s imposed and what isn’t imposed — you’re taking away from the discussion on: ‘How are we going to effectively improve student achievement?’ ” chamber President Ralph Schulz said. “It’s an ongoing discussion, and it’s not necessarily productive.”

After dropping its old practice of stamping a letter grade on the district a few years ago, the chamber this year identified “mixed results” within the school system in its latest report card.

Susan West, vice president and chief of staff at Belmont University and the report card’s co-chair, called the district’s 2012-13 results “somewhat perplexing” when compared with across-the-board gains a year before.

The 63-page report, piloted by a 24-member, citizen-led steering committee, noted elementary and high school math test gains that “we would expect to see across the system.” Yet it also identified declines in English language arts scores across all grade levels in what it acknowledged appeared to be a statewide trend.

“Of even greater concern is the lagging performance of middle schools,” the report card reads, referencing a drop of four percentage points in proficient eighth-grade math students and a three-point drop in English language arts at the same grade level.

That critique comes as the school district is in the process of rebranding its middle schools the “Middle Preps of Nashville” in an effort to retain more students at an age when they often exit the district. This includes a new marketing push and strategic overhaul.

The number of students who scored 21 or above on the ACT, which the chamber calls the most important measure of progress, went from 29 percent last year to 28 percent this year. The slight drop, according to the study, is likely because the ACT is just now starting to include results of students who require special testing accommodations.

Despite a few setbacks, the report card team still expressed confidence in Metro Schools Director Jesse Register and his long-term district-wide strategic plan through 2018. The chamber continues to champion Metro’s “Academies of Nashville” model in high schools. The committee team also believes Metro is beginning to attract and retain better teachers.

• Allow K-12 students to ride Metro Transit Authority buses for free to enhance school choice.

Two other recommendations are tied to the chamber’s continued support of Common Core academic standards, which continue to face resistance in some quarters of Tennessee and nationally:

• The Tennessee General Assembly should “stay the course” in its Common Core implementation.

• Metro should implement a strategy to communicate with parents, teachers and students about Common Core’s rigor and higher expectations.

“Most of us, meaning the general public, don’t have a full understanding of the investment and value that Common Core brings to the state,” said Patrica Stokes, president and CEO of the Urban League of Tennessee and the report’s other co-chair.